Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

What makes this even worse is that it will be well understood by the speaker that the logic is perverse and misleading ...

 

Haven't been able to keep up with this thread so sorry if this has been posted already.

I wanted to pick up on the following article in the Guardian: "Hundreds of UK care home deaths not added to official coronavirus toll"

Here in Belgium, we have been counting deaths in care homes ('woonzorgcentrums' in Dutch) and it's enormous. Today we reached a record number of 327 COVID-19 deaths. We're a country of only 11 million inhabitants, so you could multiply our numbers by approximately six to compare it to Italy.

Now 67% or two-thirds of that enormous high number of 327 deaths were people who died in care homes. Of all 1630 recorded COVID-19 deaths in Belgium, 43% thus far have been people in care homes, according to Sciensano, the government agency that publishes official figures.

I think it's sad that the most vulnerable in our society have been hit the most by this virus. I know of a person with an intellectual disability who lived in a care home close to my house who recently died of COVID-19. He was only 58. Many others from the same care home have been infected, several are in the hospital.

 

An article
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/coronavirus-is-only-part-of-the-excess-fatality-mystery.html

from the article

The following article might make not completely nonsense for judging the situation:

https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/
Hospitals Overwhelmed by Flu Patients Are Treating Them in Tent

 

For a rough comparison:

In Germany every year ~900.000 people die. This makes 2500 a day, if calculated with a population of 80 million. Another number I just came across is 2600 deaths per day. Yesterday 266 people have both, died and been positive for corona (CDC data).


This would compare to Belgium having round about (calculated by 8 times)

325 normal deaths per day, and 33 deaths positive for corona.

 

I highlighted this video [

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05-jbrHRmrs

] to a few elected representatives and included this brief summary. You guys are a much more knowledgeable audience(!); hope to don't mind the unnecessary detail. Basically these are the lessons @Jonathan Edwards has been highlighting from the start.
One thing was that the spread is not "homogeneous" i.e. hot spots require local action/measures. Jonathan had highlighted that local communities could take steps to reduce risk --- identify places to shop which are safer, support those who are at greater risk (get their shopping etc.). There is a bit of repetition but overall I was very impressed by the professionalism of the video --- the substance was excellent (thanks to those who were involved).

• death toll in Asian countries [South Korea, China, Singapore] maximum 3 per million; UK currently at more than 100 deaths per million and it may reach 200 or 300 per million [Note 1]. So the death toll in the UK, in the first wave of first wave of the epidemic, is already much higher than in Asian countries and the Asian countries already have the first wave under control.
• PCR test which is helpful in reducing the death toll i.e. not the antibody test [Note 2]. PCR test identifies people who have the virus i.e. are infected/infectious and must be isolated to reduce the transmission.
• If you haven't got enough PCR/virus tests available then diagnose based on symptoms --- you have a high temperature --- persistent cough --- assume you have coronavirus and isolate. Put in place community support, and other measures to ensure that infected people remain isolated, and trace contacts [Note 3].

Note 1: Anthony Costello (formerly a Director at the World Health Organisation - WHO) - 7 minutes 10 seconds to 8 minutes 40 seconds.
Note 2: Dr Bharat Pankhania. Senior Clinical Lecturer Exeter University - 21 minutes to 22 minutes 30 seconds.
Note 3: Anthony Costello - 24 minutes 40 seconds to 26 minutes 10 seconds.
@Keela Too

 

Oh, I see, I thought maybe you thought my relative had covid 19. Thank you for letting me know, I don't see that happening here though.

As far as I know, at the moment, care homes, hospices and hospitals aren't allowing visitors, even to patients without covid 19. When we add up the total number of deaths on average per day in the UK -not just covid related, the protective kit just isn't there. Plus the staff to oversee putting it on and taking it off again is done properly. If we could accurately test people & get a swift result, it would be different.

Then it's hard to predict when exactly someone will die. One of my parents took a long time and we recalled family from a different country on at least two occasions while I stayed in the nurses accommodation next door. So possibly some would want multiple visits if the person has a lingering death.

I saw on the news in the last couple of days a heartbreaking story of a 13 year old who died of covid 19 in Great Ormand St Hospital. He just had staff in the room, his mother couldn't see him. I just don't know who I feel more sorry for the poor kid or his mother, who must be climbing the walls.

Hopefully, my relative will get through this episode and have a few more decentish months, but there's talk of a hospice now. The spouse won't be able to visit there either.

The same story being played in many families right now.

 

Couple of days ago OH was chatting over the hedge with our next door neighbour, who is a statistician. He recommended reading John Burn-Murdoch on coronavirus. J B-M writes for FT, and every day puts up a variety of graphs, and comments on them. He's on Twitter, so you can see them there. I don't know if his stuff is part of FT's free coverage of coronavirus.

Usually they do a thread unroll too, but that doesn't seem to have happened today.

Anyway, here's the first tweet from today (they seem to go up around 1am). You should be able to see the whole thread if you click on this to go to Twitter, then hit "Show this thread" under the first graph.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1248730804513058816

 

Just found the thread unroll. The graphs are easier to look at on that!

 

This is from a few days ago but the King's College symptom tracking app suggests that the UK lockdown is slowing the spread of the virus which is in line with other data sources :

Lockdown is working, suggests latest data from symptom tracker app

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/lockdown-is-working-suggests-latest-data-from-symptom-tracker-app

 

here's a short article in French about the distance the virus travels and on which surfaces it was most found: https://www.lapresse.ca/covid-19/20...ger-jusqua-4-m-dun-malade-selon-une-etude.php

 

FWIW:

According to this model, the predicted peak in daily deaths from Covid-19 in the US should have occured yesterday, April 10. In the UK, the model predicts the peak of daily deaths to occur on April 17.

US
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america

UK
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-kingdom


Models for several other nations, and all US states, can be found by clicking on the tab in the center of the GREEN bar at the top of the screen.

 

Anthony Costello on C4 News yesterday:

https://www.channel4.com/news/we-are-playing-for-time-to-get-a-vaccine-global-health-professor

 

The thing about immunity is its not about circulating antibodies, those just indicate that there was an immune response. Its about how fast the adaptive immune system can activate upon subsequent infection. Circulating antibody levels are possibly indicative but not reliable.

 

Precisely.